Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: robert1986 on February 06, 2015, 04:03:19 PM



Title: importing wallet.dat file
Post by: robert1986 on February 06, 2015, 04:03:19 PM
hi everyone,
I am pretty new with bitcoins, but lately I started to buy 0,25bitcoin.

When I bought it I was still downloading blockchain of the bitcoin-core wallet. This took too long to complete so I decided to capture my wallet.dat file and to abort the installation of the blockchain. Now I want to download a lightweight wallet to start with. I have Ubuntu software so than the software to use would be electrum.

So I dont have the blockchain downloaded. And I would like to import the wallet.dat file in Electrum.

hope to hear from you experts,

robert from the netherlands


Title: Re: importing wallet.dat file
Post by: Newar on February 06, 2015, 04:42:04 PM

AFAIK, the only way to import wallet.dat directly is at blockchain.info. From there you then could send your coins to your Electrum or export the private key.

Other options: Export the private key for the address(es) in question from Bitcoin Core (you don't need the blockchain for that) and import to Electrum. Note that imported keys to Electrum need a separate back up.

Or use the pywallet tool https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34028.0


Title: Re: importing wallet.dat file
Post by: DannyHamilton on February 06, 2015, 04:43:28 PM
hi everyone,
I am pretty new with bitcoins, but lately I started to buy 0,25bitcoin.

When I bought it I was still downloading blockchain of the bitcoin-core wallet. This took too long to complete so I decided to capture my wallet.dat file and to abort the installation of the blockchain. Now I want to download a lightweight wallet to start with. I have Ubuntu software so than the software to use would be electrum.

So I dont have the blockchain downloaded. And I would like to import the wallet.dat file in Electrum.

hope to hear from you experts,

robert from the netherlands

Importing your wallet.dat into electrum is a bad idea.  Any addresses that get added to your wallet from the wallet.dat file won't be recoverable with the Electrum seed.

You'd be much better off importing your wallet.dat into a temporary wallet that you'll use only to send your bitcoin balance to your Electrum wallet.  You can then just abandon the temporary wallet and never use any of those addresses again.

Here's an easy place to import that wallet.dat to send the bitcoins to your Electrum wallet:

https://blockchain.info/wallet/import-wallet


Title: Re: importing wallet.dat file
Post by: Blazr on February 06, 2015, 06:42:23 PM
Yes, you should import the wallet into blockchain.info and then send the funds to a new wallet that you create with whatever software you plan on using.


Title: Re: importing wallet.dat file
Post by: rollingMyCar on February 13, 2015, 08:01:57 PM
if you want to use electrum.. ok!!!
it is really good wallet...
and you can forget the 30gb blockchain...

if you want to use electrum, just for avoid to waste time syncing blockchain,
you can do this procedure faster, downloading bootstrap file from:

https://bitcoin.org/bin/blockchain/bootstrap.dat.torrent